Make Kannada mandatory, but as a 3rd or additional language for all students.

This in reference to the notification of the Govt of Karnataka Act 2015 – Act no 22 and the subsequent notifications that have been issued by respective Deputy Directors, Department of Public Instruction and Block Education Offices recently which has made Kannada as a mandatory 1st or 2nd Language for all students studying in the state of Karnataka across all boards and schools.

While we welcome the move of adopting Kannada as a must learn language for all students here and wholeheartedly support, we request you to kindly reconsider the case of making it mandatorily 1st or 2nd language and we will state below respectfully certain facts and the reasons for such reconsideration for your perusal.

1. All students irrespective of the boards they study in, have a provision of a 3rd language which they study. Most of the students, even now take either Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telegu as the case may be with few opting for certain foreign languages. This is not assessed in the boards exams and are studied during limited time period.

2. A lot of the student population belonging to the state, hail from parents who are involved in transferable jobs across India ( Central Government, Public Sector Undertakings, Nationalised Banks, Private Sector Orgs – which mandatorily transfer employees every year). For them its important, to study 2 languages as 1st and 2nd which are available across India across boards and schools, as they keep moving between states with their parents. If Kannada were to be made mandatory as a language – 1st or 2nd, please consider the case of a student, who lets say is studying English and Hindi at Class 6 in Delhi whose father is employed with a Nationalised Bank is transferred to Hubli suddenly. It would be very difficult for the child suddenly to start learning Kannada as a 1st or 2nd language because of two reasons:

a. They would not get sufficient time, to come upto speed to learn Kannada as well as someone who has already studied it from beginning. They will be discriminated and will fare poorly in their exams.

b. The same holds good vice-versa, if a student from Karnataka were to be transferred to a different state suddenly, (who was learning lets say English & Kannada), how will they perform if they are asked to pick up a different 2nd language all of a sudden at a higher class.

In view of this, our humble request would be to make Kannada as a mandatory 3rd language for all students pursuing education in this state. We even suggest, not only for few years but throughout from Nursery till Std.8, let Kannada be taught as a 3rd language, without giving options of other regional/foreign languages. This we believe, will ensure both – development and adoption of Kannada as the language of choice for all and also ensure our children are not disadvantaged or discriminated against as we prepare them for the new economy which encourages free movement of people.